I started evaluating Open Educational Resource (OER) textbooks in hopes of finding something for one of the courses I teach: "Physics for Physiotherapy Technology" (PPT). It is an interesting course that covers the basics of mechanical statics (finding the balance of forces and torques acting on an object) in the context of biomechanics. The problem has been the lack of contemporary texts that cover the physics of mechanics at the college (algebra-based) science level, but with genuine biomechanical or physiological examples and problems. Below are some of the resources that I found that seem the most promising. They are presented in order of suitability for PPT, from most suitable to least.
Note that concurrent with my goal of finding a resource for the PPT course I looked at each resource for potential use in the Mechanics course in the Science program. The ranking of the resources against that need is essentially that same as for the PPT course.
Listed here are textbooks for college or university physics. Excluded from this listing are numerous OERs that would best be categorized as fragments. Since the goal is to replace the existing text, we need a complete text, not a collection of pages or files that cover only portions of the curriculum. A single exception is made to this, noted below.
OpenStax
: College & University Physics.
[CC:BY]
The college-level physics is here, and
the university-level physics is in three volumes
[1,
2,
3]
.
These seem to be the most complete resource at the levels we wish to consider.
The college-level physics text seems the most promising for my course.
But the three-volume complete text for university physics
needs to be thoroughly evaluated for its utility in the general science program.
Also of potential interest for my course is the
Anatomy and Physiology text, which provides good diagrams of the mechanical structure of the human body.
Note that their collection of science texts are here:
[link]
Light and Matter
: College & University Physics.
[link]
[CC:BY-SA]
Benjamin Crowell (of Fullerton College) has produced collection of textbooks (PDF) covering introductory college / university physics
[link].
His book "Light and Matter" is targeted at biology majors, and is algebra-based.
There might be some readings to assign from here,
but there does not seem to be much in the way of exercises and problems for practice.
The biggest problem for adoption in my course is the fact that he uses angular momentum as the starting point to define torque.
It will still be worthwhile to take a closer look at sections 15.4 through 15.6 for any material that could help, especially his exposition on statics.
Also of great interest might be his chapter (ch21) on electric charges, currents and circuits.
NEXUS/Physics
: An Introductory Physics Class for Life Science Students
: University Physics
Based on the extensive review of research (and original contributions) made by E.Reddish et al [paper]
this course of study has been implemented at (primarily) at the University of Maryland.
The online readings -- the "textbook" for the course -- is available at
[link]
and
[link].
There seem to be multiple resources for activities and labs on the main hosting page for the project:
[link].
Unfortunately:
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
: University Physics
[link]
[copyright 2013]
A gold standard in physics exposition,
but arguably at too high a level for our average students.
(Also, more critically, lacking in any diversity of conceptual problems, and having no biomechanics.)
This is still an important resource for pedagogical ideas,
and an excellent place to direct our more advanced and adventuresome students.
While this has been made available on the web, it is not clear if the copyright holders intend for this to remain available in perpetuity, as it is expressly not in the public domain.
The Physics Hypertextbook
: University Physics
[link]
[©2018]
The name says it all.
It's just your standard university-level (calculus-based) physics textbook
written by a prof disgruntled by the publishers.
It does have some exercises associated with content,
but seems to be a work in progress with many holes.
This work is the one exception I make to the requirement of completeness
because it is a work in progress that warrants monitoring;
it may one day achieve the reuired level.
The work is presented as a copyrighted work,
but the author explicitly opens the work to non-commerical use
``as described in the fair use clause of United States Copyright Law''
[link].
Hyper-Physics
[link]
[©2017]
This is (almost) the entirety of university-level physics,
spelled out as a comprehensive web of concept maps,
each node with its own subpage of detailed material.
This really does not qualify as a textbook,
but it is a phenomenal resource and reference.
It is not a textbook in that it lacks a narrative structure,
but it may be worth directing the student to browse the structure of ideas
as a part of their review regimine.
The Karlsruhe Physics Course
:
It seems that "high school" physics in Germany is almost like first-year undergraduate in Canada?
This open textbook is exceptionally innovative,
in that it emphasizes conservation principles of energy and momentum as a starting point,
and speaks of "momentum flows" before defining and using "forces".
The website also provides some supporting material, and
a number of published papers on the design of the curriculum.
[link]
"Laws of Physics"
: University Physics
Here's an online text hosted at the National University of Singapore.
It has a large emphasis on Thermodynamics.
While it does have "examples", sadly it does not seem to have any exercises.
[link]
Motion Mountain
[link]
[CC:BY-NC-ND]
This is too far from the content and coverage that we need for our course(s),
but is inspiring in its scope.
It is very difficult to categorize this enormous resource.
In its concept and structure it reminds me more of a popularization than a textbook.
But on closer reading it (volume 1 is 601 pages, as a multi-media 260-megabyte PDF)
there is no other way to describe it except weighty.
He goes very, very deep into the historical and philosophical aspects of physics,
physical law and reality as viewed objectively.
If you can imagine Jearl Walker's "The Flying Circus of Physics" written
by Douglas Hofstadter (of "Gödel, Escher, Bach" fame)
then you might get this opus.
The "exercises" at the end of each chapter are exceptionally challenging conceptual problems,
in the vein of Walker's "Circus".
There is much here to inspire, but almost nothing here to use for the course.
The author does have his own list of other available freebooks:
[link].
Landau and Lifshitz - Mechanics
: University Graduate Level
[link]
[©1969]
This is a graduate physics level monograph,
but I feel compelled to include it
due to density of awesomeness.
Post-secondary educational institutions that host or support OER.
University of Athabasca
:
This U of A is a world leader in distance learning.
They offer full degrees through online courses.
For their college-level physics course
[link]
they are using
Conceptual Physics,
(11th ed) by Paul G Hewitt
(Petersburg, FL: Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2010).
We should try calling them to discuss their OER structures:
1-800-788-9041 (toll-free in Canada / US).
University of Saskatchewan
:
They have a resource page of OER materials:
[link].
Here's their list of links to open textbooks:
[link].
This also leads to a research group
[link]
that has a number of published reviews.
MIT Open Course Ware
:
Basically all of their courses, online.
There is a massive amount of material, here
[link].
They also have a list of online textbooks:
[link],
in which there is currently only one for Mechanics:
[link].
Carnegie Mellon U - Open Learning Initiative
:
"Improvement in post secondary education
will require converting teaching from a solo sport
to a community based research activity."
-- Herbert Simon (1916-2001), Nobel Prize Economics 1978, Turning Award 1975.
(Link to role of H.Simon in the establishment of the OLI at Carnegie Mellon:
[link].)
Link to list of all courses:
[link].
Specific courses of
Physics
and
Engineering Statics
should be reviewed carefully.
Listed here are places to begin further searches. They are either "warehouses", lists, or directories.
SALTISE
:
"Supporting Active Learning & Technological Innovation in Studies of Education"
[link].
This organization has begun to curate a large collection of OERs related to Active Learning,
with an emphasis (so far) in the sciences.
Compadre
:
The host site for Open Source Physics:
simulations and applets;
papers and conference proceedings;
as well as materials and papers related to curriculum development.
[link]
Branched off of BC campus' open education initiative, here is the list curated by E-Campus Ontario: [link]. Specifically physics: link
Here is a discussion on the Physics Stackexchange wiki that has a very large list of online texts and resources: [link]
"FreeScience.info" is a directory of resources and texts. Unfortunately most of the links are poorly formatted and must be copied manually before use. Some are broken. Approach with scepticism: [link]
Not really sure what these are: EBooksGo.org and FreebookCenter.net